How was your grieving different from you and your spouse/significant other?

Im having a difficult time with how different my husband and I are processing what happened on Sunday. It is still so fresh and so recent. I just gave birth 48 hours ago. I know I'll eventually move on and be ok, but I'm not right now.

My husband went back to work Monday. Literally like 12 hours after I was discharged from the hospital. He has been off since we got the news last Thursday and he works a short week with the holiday, but seriously? I know he wants to keep busy and I can respect we will process this differently, but I'm a little angry that he didn't even want to take another day just to at least support me. I'm also trying to physically recover from my 42 hour induction, and I have a three old boy who is a hyper ball of energy. I hurt myself yesterday trying to keep up with him and lift him.

Last night I was having a rough time. I woke my husband up to tell him I couldn't sleep and I needed some comfort, and he said he was really tired and needed sleep to work today. Yes, it was 3:30 in the morning. But I need help. Just for a little while. A little extra help.

I don't want this experience to drive a wedge between him and me. How did you all deal with the difference in personalities, needs and wants?

Comments (5)

I know how you feel. We lost our son Vincent a year ago and the difference in grieving is at its worst right now. I feel as thought its weighing me down now more than ever because I tried to keep myself busy and appear stronger than I was and now it has built up and I am so sad. we are past the year mark and I feel like everyone has forgot but me. When I told my husband that I think he has forgot he argues and says he just handles it differently. Hes silent and will have some mood swings, but doesnt say our sweet boy's name..It just hurts because he admits we grieve differently but doesn't want to talk much more about it. Sherokee Ilse has a good book about the difference in women and men grieving the loss of a child. There is a co-author that is a man, so its great to have his input. It was an easy read and helps put things in perspective a bit. Hugs to you mama, so sorry for you loss. Hang in there the best you can.

First of all, I'm so sorry you and your husband are going through this devastating experience.
My husband tends to go into hibernation mode when stressed or sad, while I struggle with insomnia and anxiety attacks. That was probably what was hardest on our relationship, during and just after the miscarriage. Despite what I'd been through physically, I simply could not sleep or even relax, while he couldn't seem to stay awake. He would just go to bed for hours and play games on his phone or doze, and I felt so hurt. I thought, really, you can't even get up and check on me? At first, when I confronted him, he apologized but didn't really snap out of it. Over the course of a couple days and more conversations, he started acting more like himself and stepped up his efforts to be there for me.
It's so hard to keep asking for what you need, when some of it is really obvious, and should be especially obvious to the person you share your life with. And I don't have lc, so I can only try to imagine trying to handle a 3 year old while still physically recovering!

Married couples and their relationships are so diverse. For me, getting around that wedge entailed tons of conversation...some not too pleasant, but some that brought us closer. It meant not giving up when I felt like saying, fine do whatever you want!...and trying to understand his grief, while not excusing the lack of support.

after we lost Oliver my husband had to find things to fix. he needed to be at work so he could solve problems, because at home it was a double whammy, the loss of our son and also watching me hurt and not being able to fix it.

Are you doing any grief counseling? I didn't think we would benefit a lot but our grief conselor was amazing. She really he4lped us with one major thing- finding a way to be a parent to our son. Even though we didn't get to parent him in the way we wanted, by changing his dipers and nursing him, we found other ways of being his parents, like doing special things to honor him at the holiddays, making donations in his name, and I pumped and donated breastmilk for 6 weeks post partum.

Being able to look at my husband's actions as his way of parenting made it seem less detached for me.

So many hugs. It will be raw for a while and I recommend using every resource you have available for help- you never know where you will find support.

My DH (dear husband) is a typical man, I have to tell him exactly what I mean or what I want. I know he grieves, but he's also the eternal optimist, he always has been. I'm more of a realist, maybe somewhat pessimistic, so the fact that I'm experiencing unexplained infertility following a loss is not helping my attitude. I think he tries to compensate for that by saying things he think will help or cheer me up. But really, sometimes I just want to be sad/frustrated/pissed/depressed and have those feelings be acknowledged rather than fixed. I think in some ways, the loss is easier for him to avoid but in other ways not. I'm the one that had the physical experience, I'm the one with the infertility problems, I'm the one who has to spend time every day charting temps, symptoms, doing LH tests, taking 6-8 pills a day, etc. He's simply told when he has to "perform" and when I'm not interested. On the other hand, I work with mostly men and he is a school teacher, so he is bombarded with kids, young moms, pregnancy announcements, baby showers, etc. I could NOT cope with that right now. As a woman, I can find other women who share my experience and confide in them. I have told him several times that our loss is not some secret, he is welcome to tell whoever he pleases and talk about it in whatever way might make him feel better even if it's not with me. Thankfully he has never tried to minimize our loss. The only time I feel upset is that he's never been good at standing up to his family so if something makes me uncomfortable (like I don't want to go to church with his parents because I totally panic when I end up confronted with lots of pregnant women and babies), I have to say so myself. Sometimes I just need someone else to speak up for me or take the hint that I'm already emotionally exhausted, but I've always been the one that's an emotional rock so I've sort of shot myself in the foot there, so to speak. People don't understand how much this has knocked the wind out of me because not even I understand it.

It's only been 2 days and he was off on Monday and he was sad but a quick visit with his family brought him back to his ordinary self. He's back to work and he didn't even call me during the day to make sure I was ok ,but he did came home and gave me a hug but he didn't brought up what happened. He just ate his dinner and went straight to bed. I'm struggling really hard with it but he does wake up every now and then to ask me if I'm ok....every little sniffle makes him jump out of his sleep so I guess he's just supporting me the best way he knows how while trying to get past it himself.

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